COMPOSERS: Mccoy Tyner
LABELS: Telarc
PERFORMER: Mccoy Tyner
CATALOGUE NO: CD-83576
There’s nothing ‘new’ in MCCOY TYNER’s Land of Giants, and with his old friend Bobby Hutcherson on vibes, and the practised rhythm section of Charnett Moffett and Eric Harland, the pianist is leading a group which is more about taking a confident sprint around a well-loved track than conquering new lands.
Yet the conciliatory pleasure that seems to hum between Tyner and Hutcherson melts away any qualms about having heard all this somewhere before. Perhaps they will never top their blissful 1993 encounter Manhattan Moods (Blue Note), but there are still passages here of such shining lyricism that they provoke shivers of delight; and just to keep them from getting a shade too comfortable, there is Harland, a tremendously pushy drummer.
New York jazz still has an accent which no other jazz territory can quite replicate: smart, fast, bitingly professional, and with a lick of arrogance that tastes of working in the jazz capital of the world. It’s a characteristic jazz-market irony that New York’s modern music has been best-documented in recent years by a Dutch label.
Gerry Teekens’s Criss Cross operation records the kind of hardcore acoustic jazz which most of the major labels have given up on, and every fresh batch is like a bulletin straight from the Apple.